Hiding Columns and Rows

Last Updated: 03/30/17

What you'll learn:

Advantages of Hiding; Important Notes; Hiding and Unhiding a Column; Hiding and Unhiding a Row; Hiding and Unhiding a Table

Advantages of Hiding

In the past, when rolling forward your Q3 10Q to your Q1 10Q, you may have deleted your YTD columns in order to hide them. However, with the Hide Columns and Hide Rows feature, you can hide the YTD columns instead of deleting, making them available to unhide in Q2. This saves you from needing to relink and retag those columns.

Important Notes

A workbook or document shared with hidden rows or columns will remain hidden after a share.

Even though rows or columns are hidden, all functions, links and formulas participate as they normally would if unhidden.

You must run an XBRL document check after hiding rows and columns for the hidden content to be registered for XBRL purposes - if you don't perform an XBRL document check, the changes will remain in draft mode and will render if XBRL is generated.

When rows and columns are hidden, PDF, DOCX, XLSX and EDGAR outputs will not display the hidden rows or columns.

Values displayed in the outputs based off of a formula, will still include the hidden data in those formulas. XBRL content in a hidden row isn't taken out of the XBRL outline, which could cause errors or unintended results (such as Calculation Relationship Inconsistencies).

If you hide rows or columns containing deprecated XBRL concepts, and then migrate your XBRL taxonomy to a more current one, these concepts will still appear in your migration log. Wdesk will inform you of this with a prompt.

Hiding and Unhiding a Column

If you want to hide column A, place your cursor over column A in the column bar and right-click. The right-click menu displays. Select Hide Column.

Column A is now hidden, indicated by the thick blue line in the column bar just to the left of where the column previously displayed.

More than one column can be hidden at a time by clicking and dragging your cursor over the columns you want hidden then repeating the above process. Again, the thick blue line displays to the left in the column bar, with the columns selected now hidden.

Non-successive columns can also be hidden, for example column A and column D, but you must select and hide them one at a time as described above.

To unhide columns simply right-click anywhere in the column bar and select Unhide All Columns.

Hiding and Unhiding a Row

Hiding and unhiding rows follows the same steps as hiding and unhiding columns described above, but instead of right-clicking on the column bar, right-click on the row number.

Hiding and Unhiding a Table

There may be times when you want to hide an entire table but still have access to it later, e.g. a YTD that you hide during Q1 and unhide at Q2.

To hide an entire table, add an extra row to the table. Highlight all the rows except the new one and hide them. Then take the remaining blank row and minimize it to 4 pixels.

In this image you can see the outline of the blank row of a table which has nine rows hidden:

To unhide the table, right-click the row number and select Unhide for the hidden rows (in this case, rows 1 through 9):

TIP: You may need to click the 4 pixel row and make it larger manually before right-clicking it.